Sunday Poetry: Smells Like a Butcher

Fiesta Melons

In Benidorm there are melons,
Whole donkey-carts full

Of innumerable melons,
Ovals and balls,

Bright green and thumpable
Laced over with stripes

Of turtle-dark green.
Chooose an egg-shape, a world-shape,

Bowl one homeward to taste
In the whitehot noon :

Cream-smooth honeydews,
Pink-pulped whoppers,

Bump-rinded cantaloupes
With orange cores.

Each wedge wears a studding
Of blanched seeds or black seeds

To strew like confetti
Under the feet of

This market of melon-eating
Fiesta-goers.

(Sylvia Plath)

In October of 1962 Plath and her estranged husband Ted Hughes took a brief make-up vacation together on the Ireland coast. He didn't stay for long. After a few days he disappeared and it's now believed he'd shuttled back to his lover Assia and they went off together for a couple weeks to Spain.



Sylvia didn't know that, but she had always hated Spain even though she had honeymooned there after marrying Ted.

Benidorm is famous for its ongoing festivals.

This poem is mysterious in its simplicity. It's as if there's no there there.